Ethereum (ETH) developers have put out a call to the community to help test the long awaited Merge between the Ethereum Mainnet and the proof-of-stake (PoS) based Beacon Chain. The Merge is a major milestone towards the transition to Eth2 as it will see the Ethereum network become a PoS blockchain, decreasing its energy consumption by 99%. On Nov. 29 Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden announced a new program to get the community involved in Merge testing that caters to three tiers: non-technical users, developers with limited experience in blockchain and highly technical and experienced blockchain developers. Testing is …

Avalanche ecosystem accelerator Colony has raised $18.5 million in seed investments to bootstrap the next generation of Avalanche blockchain projects, underscoring heightened demand for the proof-of-stake ecosystem. The investment round was led by the Avalanche Foundation, an organization overseeing ecosystem development grants, with additional participation from Shima Capital, HashKey, GBV Capital and Bixin Ventures. Members of the Avalanche community also participated in the seed round. Colony will use the funds to finance early-stage projects building on the Avalanche network and to provide liquidity for decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols. Colony’s community will also have the opportunity to invest in early-stage …

Developer group Oasis Foundation has launched a $160 million ecosystem fund to bootstrap promising projects building on top of Oasis Network, a privacy-enabled blockchain with a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) and the so-called data economy. The fund was established to attract new developers to the Oasis Network so that they can build the next generation of decentralized applications that support DeFi, nonfungible tokens, data tokenization and the metaverse, Oasis Foundation announced Wednesday. Startups and existing projects building on Oasis Network are both eligible to receive grants, the Foundation confirmed. In addition to Oasis Foundation’s contributions, the ecosystem fund was …

A new study from the United Kingdom revealed that most game studios have already started exploring blockchain for their upcoming titles. Commissioned by blockchain platform Stratis and undertaken by insight agency Opinion, the new research surveyed 197 video game developers in the United States and the United Kingdom. The results showed that 58% of developers are beginning to use blockchain technology, and almost half of the respondents (47%) started incorporating nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The study indicates developers’ confidence in blockchain and NFTs, as two-thirds of studios expect blockchain to become prevalent in the gaming industry within the next two years. …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) scored another win with gaming giant Zynga’s announcement of the upcoming integration of NFTs and blockchain into the publisher’s portfolio. San Francisco-based game developer Zynga, best known for its FarmVille and CSR Racing series, appointed marketing veteran Matt Wolf as its vice president to oversee the company’s blockchain gaming efforts. With the addition of Wolf, Zynga will work on integrating NFTs and blockchain into its existing portfolio in addition to developing new NFT-based games. Zynga chief product officer Scott Koenigsberg noted that the company became an early adopter of emerging platforms and technologies with new releases on …

Cronos has announced the launch of its mainnet beta in a bid to facilitate greater interoperability between the Cosmos and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystems. The release will enable developers to port decentralized applications (dApps), and smart contracts from Ethereum and EMV-compatible chains to the Cronos network at a low-cost and fast speed due to its Inter-Blockchain Communications (IBC) protocol integration. This will offer accessibility to Crypto.com's 10 million-strong customer base. Built upon the Cosmos blockchain and powered by Ethermint — a proof-of-authority consensus mechanism — Cronos operates adjacent to the Crypto.org chain. Epic Day 1 at @cronos_chain ✅ Mainnet …

While the Ethereum blockchain has the community advantage, the competition with Solana is heating up thanks to the rise of blockchain-based play-to-earn games, which is now simply called GameFi. Founded by Scopely and Glu Mobile veterans, game developer and publisher Faraway announced that the studio has raised $21 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and major crypto exchange FTX. Along with the $8-million seed round, Faraway now has $30 million in total funding from renowned crypto ecosystem investors a16z, Sequoia Capital, Pantera Capital, Jump Capital and Solana. The company is developing its flagship title, …

The Avalanche Foundation has unveiled “Blizzard” — a fund offering more than $200 million in incentives to developers who build on the Avalanche network. The fund will provide liquidity to those early-stage projects that innovate decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and other products on Avalanche. Avalanche is a Proof-of-Stake network that launched in September 2020. The network boasts Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatibility, allowing developers to port decentralized applications over from Ethereum. The network now boasts more than 320 projects that are currently building on it, including top stablecoin issuer Tether, popular DEX SushiSwap, and oracle providers Chainlink and …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability, and governance. Blockchain testnets are an interesting subject because they come in all shapes and sizes. So, in this post, my goal is to leverage my inside experience as the CEO of Koinos Group (developers of …

Multichain transaction network Biconomy has concluded a public token sale of its BICO cryptocurrency, onboarding more than 12,500 new tokenholders in the process, the company announced Thursday. The public sale, which was facilitated by token listing platform CoinList, raised a cumulative $11.5 million. More than 850,000 people registered for the sale, which was the largest waitlist on CoinList to date. The sale took place on Oct. 14 via two options of 40 million and 10 million BICO tokens. BICO will be used to power Biconomy’s ecosystem as it vies to attract more developers to the community. The so-called multichain relayer …

Smart contract ecosystem Near Protocol has earmarked $800 million for new funding initiatives aimed at growing its decentralized finance capabilities, offering the latest evidence that the highly lucrative DeFi market is still in its infancy. The new funding, which includes the $350 million grants program announced by Proximity Labs last week, gives ecosystem developers added incentive to create new product offerings on Near, the company announced Monday. Roughly $250 million will be allocated to existing ecosystem developers and another $100 million is earmarked for startup grants, with Near planning to fund more than 20 startups at a rate of $5 …

White hat hacker Gerhard Wagner has earned $2 million after reporting a solution to a potentially costly “double-spend” bug on the Polygon network. In an Oct. 21 blog post from Immunefi, a security service that helps facilitate bug reports in decentralized finance projects, Polygon network’s Plasma Bridge was at risk of having $850 million removed by a knowledgeable hacker. According to the project, the vulnerability would have allowed attackers to exit their burn transaction from the bridge up to 223 times, quickly turning an amount like $4,500 into $1 million profi. Immunefi reported the double-spend exploit worked by first depositing …